Russian Government Adviser Says He Fled to Avoid Risk of Jailing

Sergei Guriev, an adviser to the
Russian government, said he fled the country to avoid
imprisonment after he became a witness in a case involving OAO
Yukos, the oil company of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Guriev, 41, left Moscow April 30 on a one-way flight to
Paris, where his family lives, after more than two months of
interrogation, he said in a telephone interview today.

“My family considers it its right to see me near them and
not in Krasnokamensk,” Guriev said, referring to the town in
Siberia, where Khodorkovsky was held in a penal colony. “I must
have freedom of speech and not be afraid of being imprisoned for
it.” He declined to comment on when he may return to Russia.

Guriev, the rector of the New Economic School in Moscow,
contributed to a report commissioned by then-president Dmitry Medvedev in 2011 that criticized the verdict in a second case on
Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man.

Khodorkovsky, 49, is serving 13 years in prison under two
separate convictions for fraud, tax evasion and oil
embezzlement. Yukos was sold in pieces, mostly to state-run OAO
Rosneft (ROSN), to cover tens of billions of dollars in back taxes.

“If what we are seeing is a liberal economist representing
one political faction being hounded out of the country by people
presumably working for the more conservative faction, then there
is reason to be deeply concerned about free discourse and
government policy making,” Eric Kraus, a fund manager at
Nikitsky Capital, which oversees about $215 million, said in an
e-mail.

Confiscated E-mails

Guriev was first summoned for questioning by the
Investigative Committee on Feb. 12. Investigators, who scheduled
another interrogation for April 25, confiscated all of Guriev’s
e-mails for the last five years, he said.

Guriev sought this week to withdraw his nomination to the
supervisory board of state-run lender OAO Sberbank (SBER) and to leave
his post as a rector of the New Economic School. The
institution’s board yesterday approved his resignation. He was
re-elected to Sberbank’s board, Sberbank Chairman Herman Gref
said at the lender’s annual shareholders meeting.

“Of course, it’s a pity,” Gref told reporters after
meeting. “He is a very effective person, very professional,
very tough, always uncompromising. I hope he will work here in
the future at supervisory council.”